Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

In "The World of Null-A", circa 1945, by A.E.Van Vogt, he refers to this as "The Cortical-Thalamic Pause", the moment when a truly rational man chooses a reaction other than reflexively. Did your dad read SF? -- RonJeffries

No, he was a minister. Don't know where he got that one. -- DavidHooker

It's not only a matter of when to do things,. but whether or not to do them at all. It's asking questions of why and how as well as when. It's consulting your compass as well as your clock.

Trust is the natural outgrowth of trustworthinesss. So the highest-leverage thing we can do to create trust is to be trustworthy.

To understand the application may be to meet the challenge of the moment; but to understand the principle is to meet the challenge of the moment more effectively and to be empowered to meet a thousand challenges of the future as well.

"Was it for this my life I sought? Maybe so, maybe not. Control for smilers can't be bought." -- Tom Marshall, Stash

"The appropriate demeanor for a human is to feel lucky that he is alive and to humble himself in the face of the immensity of things and have a beer. Relax. Welcome to Earth. It's a little confusing at first. That's why you have to come back over and over again before you learn to really enjoy yourself. The sky is not falling." -- KaryMullis

"With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress." -- Ransom K. Ferm

"Since Aristotle [MrAristotle], man has organized his knowledge vertically in separate and unrelated groups... The main emphasis in his language, his system of storing knowledge, has been on the identification of objects rather than on the relationships between objects." -- from the sleeve notes of The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - GrouchoMarx -- Submitted by AlanFrancis

Tanstaafl: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. -- RobertHeinlein

All you need is love/all you need is love, love/love is all you need. -- JohnLennon and Paul McCartney

Instant karma's gonna get you, baby. There's nothing you can do that can't be done. -- JohnLennon

"He's the glue that holds the gears of this organization together" (?)

"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum. ("When you have their
full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow")-- TerryPratchett writing in Small Gods. (The motto of the Exquisition)

"I wish everyone was peaceful. Then I could take over the planet with a butter knife." -- DogBert

All you phonies get it wrong: Double lives take half as long. -- SteveTaylor, "Drive, He Said"

Ironically, Agassiz was a strong opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -- HowardAiken?

Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the Ready-Aim-Aim-Aim Syndrome. You must be willing to fire. -- T. Boone Pickens

If the opposite of a great truth is another great truth, then Mr Pickens has perpetrated a great truth, to which the opposing great truth is the usual sequentiae of "Ready, Fire, Aim." The fulsome overpraising of the "bias for action" in management textbooks has led to numerous real-world examples.

Capability is its own motivation. (Can't remember where I heard this.)

"Beware of [a] single-minded focus on material productivity, for it makes tools of the living and, as Aristotle said, living tools are slaves." from WadeRowland? in Ockham's Razor [OccamsRazor] (AnthonyLander)

OK. They're not short but they are beautiful (that's not the quote):

Quote #1:

All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:- How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.

Quote #2:

The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet, and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards, the mind proceeding further, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names.

-- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding -- John Locke

Voting is the next-to-last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge, of course, is giving your opinion to a pollster. -- NielPostman?

"Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail." -- JohnFigler?, stating the core idea of the body of KurtVonnegut's work.

quos deus vult perdere, prius dementat. Whom the gods will destroy, they first make mad.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"